Fr Paris The Great Flood Of 1910

FR Paris The Great Flood of 1910

I recently came into a pile of early 20th century French postcards.

Given last year's major weather events in the USA (Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria), I'll start with the Great Flood of January, 1910.

To me, of course, the Big Deal was finding a card postmarked 18/March/1910, just seven weeks after the crest ... at a time when there was still plenty of water in basements, tunnels, etc.

Rue Bayen postmark from this set:



Rue Bayen postmark from Siegel:



https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_Bayen

I am more than a little embarrassed to admit that, if I ever heard anything about this flood, I forgot every bit of it.

But, not to worry, there's plenty of imagery on YouTube, and postcards on Flickr, and news reports ...

http://www.parisunderwater.com/ ... Paris Under Water is an excellent website (and book and blog) on the subject ... many of the illustrations (postcards & photographs) closely resemble the ones I've posted, below ...

http://www.parisunderwater.com/post...sellers.html ... best of all, the book's website includes a page about these documentary postcards, and their peddlers.

Eleven minutes of archived film clips with a nice soundtrack

*** Edited by Staff to add YouTube tags. Please use them in the future. We prefer embedded video. ***

And, of course, there are excellent websites comparing the Paris floods of yesteryear and today:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...re-this-bad/ ... WaPo reports on more recent floods in Paris, and includes cards similar to some of mine

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/loc...12172159.php ... the Houston Chronicle compares 2017 Houston to 1910 Paris ...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42856634 ... the last photo on the page shows Paris flood levels from 1910 thru 2018 (like, you know, last week)

https://www.thelocal.fr/20180129/be...ods-in-paris ... photographs of landmarks, antebellum (before the flood) and postbellum

The Postcards

01 Gare de Courcelles-Levallois



02 boats docking at the Place de l'Alma (think 'Princess Diana') https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_de_l%27Alma ...



03 Sauvetage d'un Paralytique (Rescue of a Paralytic) ... there are lots of photos like this from Houston 2017 ...



04 Porte de la Gare et Quai d'Ivry (Metro station)



05 Avenue Montaigne



06 Place de la Concorde au cr#1497;puscule (dusk)



07 Rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts (500m east of 'our' hotel when my parents took me to Europe in 1964)



08 Quai de la Tournelle (street along the south side of the Seine) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quai_de_la_Tournelle



09 Pont de Bercy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_de_Bercy ... note the water 'filling' the arches under the bridge



The same bridge, in calmer waters, showing its arches. (By Pline - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ind...urid=809586)



And, here are more links just about the floods of 1910:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1910_...ood_of_Paris

https://www.theguardian.com/weather...t-flood-1910 ... photos

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/f...0_paris.html ... photos

https://iht-retrospective.blogs.nyt...od-in-paris/ ... IHT retrospective

https://weather.com/photos/news/rem...lood-of-1910 ... photos

https://weather.com/photos/news/rem...lood-of-1910 ... excellent then-and-now flood photos

Lastly, The Paris Zoo, from the book Paris Under Water:



Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Excellent. And pertinent, as the Seine is extremely high now.